Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1912 (Heft 39))

American one. But they can claim honesty of execution. Children draw
when they feel the impulse. The idea is vague as mist on a light summer
morning. The motif develops while the children are at work. The directness
of the performance triumphs over all technical obstructions. As it does not
strive for a certain regulated perfection of representation—the bane of the
accomplished technician,—it eliminates detail, and although crowded with
contradictions, it comes down to fundamentals. The little craftsmen stop as
soon as they feel bored, but while they work they do so with wonderful earn-
estness and enthusiasm. And after that performance is done and shown to
the person nearest in reach, the piece of paper is carelessly tossed aside. It
has become valueless in their eyes; it is forgotten like the incidents of a nursery
game. It is treasured only by sober “ Olympians’ ’ who take a pride in the
cleverness of their offspring.
Quite a lesson in the conduct of life as might be applied to the artist!
Alas, to combine strength and beauty with maturity of expression, we must
sacrifice naturalness—at least the finest part of it. Education towards per-
fection throttles straightforwardness. The red Indian squaw ornamented
her baskets and blankets in that childlike fashion. All primitive embellish-
ments of utilitarian articles were made that way, but that naivete of per-
formance was lost when art became a profession and a money-making device.
It has become an ideal that only a few solitary workers cherish and strive to
maintain. It is possible only to true greatness of soul. The human mind
wavers between two abysses. On one side lies the gulf of unconsciousness
from which all life springs and in which all lower manifestations of nature
subsist. On the other side heaves the sea of insanity, the extreme of the
fullest appreciation of existence, where man loses his identity to interpret
another personality. The child thrives in the realm of unconsciousness; the
great artist, like the madman who believes himself to be a king or Jesus Christ,
becomes one with the work he creates. Shakespeare was Hamlet while he
wrote it. Whistler embodied night when he painted his nocturnes. Wagner
became elemental when he encaged in sound the rushing musical waters of the
Rhine. The child rises slowly from the state of unconsciousness, that resembles
the soul state of the idiot whose mind dissolves in the all, to higher stages of
development where it can comprehend and interpret individual manifestations
of life. Will destroys unconsciousness. Artists depending on strength alone
steadily approach the state of utmost dramatic intensity. Few cover the whole
range of human thought. Those are the greatest. They remain simple as
children but unconsciously in their art become identical with the object of
their creation.
This is what the exhibition of children’s drawings suggested to me. No
doubt, they conveyed other thoughts and sentiments to other minds. And
that is the aesthetic value of these abstract pictorial visions.
Sadakichi Hartmann.

46